I’ve seen bazillions of old photos of Portland, especially on my photo trips to the Oregon Historical Society’s research library. What I haven’t seen before is footage like this, traffic surveys from 1939 that show familiar intersections with vintage cars ‘n folks. I find it fascinating, even though nothing happens.

Via Cafe Unknown.

6th & Washington

6th & Alder, with scary bicylce moment

12th & Burnside (E), still a messed up intersection–in color! 1939!

6th & Morrison, also in color

Tags: history, portland, traffic, video, vintage

For PDX-ers still mourning the loss of local coffee chain Coffee People (summarily bought out of existence by Starbucks, who coveted their two drive-in locations on MLK Blvd.) might feel a little bit better knowing that there is somewhere that is still carrying the flame.

There is a shop on SE Grand Ave and approximately Oak Street (quite near Nicholas, the Miller Paint Store and Andy and Bax) called something like “Coffee Shop People” (it’s kind of hard to parse) . They serve Black Tiger and Velvet Hammer espresso drinks and milkshakes. Granted the coffee itself is Dietrich, but that’s as close as you’re going to get. Perhaps my Google fu is weak but they don’t seem to have a Web presence whatsoever, even on GMaps. I didn’t actually get a milkshake today (they’re $4.55 for a “small” and I’d just had a stuffingly yum Nicholas mezza), but I’m very glad to know they’re there.

Girl behind the counter says they’re all authentic Coffee People recipes. Anyone seen this place or tried their clones?

Also, RIP Torrefazione. You were too good for S’bucks, too.

Tags: coffee

Like Portland? Like mobile stuff? Like tech and Web stuff? Then get mobilated. Cell-webbed. Textoclicked.

Cloud Four (that’s my awesome company!) is helping to organize a new Mobile Portland group, where mobile people can get together and yak it up and make great leaps in ideas for mobility.

Keep an eye on Cloud Four’s blog for more information, or sign up at mobileportland.com.

See also coverage on Silicon Florist.

Tags: mobile, PDX, portland, technology, web

It’s the 13th! Know what that means? It means that, at least until I change the logic again, that it’s the day you’ll see a photograph of a rainbow in Finland (it was an epic rainbow, believe me) in the header of the site. I know most of you don’t actually visit the site itself, but you can trust me.

So in that vein, I’m going to talk about the weather.

My OS X weather widget shows a mostly sunny icon for today. Word on the street is that it’s supposed to be mild. But here it is 10:38 and the sky is crusted over and it’s only 40 degrees. This got me to thinking about weather, forecasting, and challenge that putting the two together causes for meteorologists in the Pacific Northwest. I gather the weather is hard to predict here.

If you prefer to receive your weather outlook as more of a fascinating, introspective musing (often with shades of grey) than a simple icon, and you live ’round here, I highly recommend Fox 12’s Weather Blog. I like how the jargon and the zeal show through in passages like this:

Models continue to show longwave ridging over the Northwest through at least the early part of the next week. This weekend looks especially nice with very high 500mb. heights and a sharp ridge.

I also like how the forecast is posited as a theory, not an inevitability. The blogging weathermen question themselves and their data in their posts. There’s lots of use of “maybe.” I like that. And there’s a heck of a lot of commenting by other people who also seem to have zeal.

Also interesting to me is ForecastAdvisor, which has apparently been around for some time. They collect forecasts from the major providers and analyze it for accuracy. Looks like forecasts for Portland are right about 3/4 of the time, which is more than I would have expected. And their icon for today shows rain (albeit I can’t figure out the source of their forecast from their FAQ–is it boiled down from all of the forecasts they process or their own data?)! Also noteworthy is that you can click on a day’s forecast and see past guesses for the same day leading up to the current outlook.

Other interesting weather sites or data I should know about?

Thanks to @donpdonp for the inspiration here.

Tags: forecast, weather

Brewcaster over at Metroblogging Portland posted something about suckage at Los Baez Mexican restaurant, which is not far from my house, even so far as to give it a rating of EPIC FAIL.

I would argue, however, that the even bigger suckulus is Citysearch itself, to which the article linked. Look at this. Apparently Citysearch is unable to perform basic math and find the average of ratings. I could swear my friend Todd stumbled upon this before [Updated: it was my friend Kes*], but I can’t find it on his blog right now. I just find it kind of staggering. The correct “answer” is about 3.23 stars.

By the way, I hate Citysearch with that special disdain normally reserved for things like Microsoft and mislaid dog poo.

* So, sorry about the whole plagiarism thing, Kes.

Tags: citysearch, Rant, sucks